Good on them. Fake news isn't anything you don't like. "Justin Bieber cures cancer" would be fake news. The New York Times running a story on Drumpf's ties to Russia is not 'fake news' and calling their entire organization 'fake news' is patent fucking nonsense.

No, that is not what 'fake news' means. Very little in this world has actually been proven. If everything that hasn't been proven is fake news 99.999999% of everything anyone ever says or publishes is 'fake news'.

I watch news for facts, not for opinions or rumors.

That's fine, that doesn't mean opinions or rumors are 'fake news'.

You're demonstrating the problem. People use 'fake news' to mean 'news I don't like' and that's not what it means. If you want to criticize a report or a publication you can do that in many ways without incorrectly calling it 'fake news'

Most of these news stories are based on other news stories based on some other news stories ultimately leading to an original source which is unproven or with false conclusions.

To be clear: when i say 'things you don't like' I'm not saying you're wrong not to like those things. I'm just saying they aren't 'fake news'.

Fake news is these sites with names like abcnewsmedia.net that looks like ABC and has a completely made up report from a made up reporter that is designed to look like it came from ABC. Fake news is not CNN releasing a controversial report that may or may not have all of the facts 100% straight. You can call that sloppy or bad or biased reporting or whatever you want but you cannot accurately call it fake news because it isn't. They are not just blatantly making shit up and that is what fake news means.

1. Intentionally made up facts. For example when it is said "accordingly to someone who wants to remain in secret", without any other sources provided. Of course might be true, but very unlikely.

2. Intentionally cherry picked quotes. Only certain parts of original source are quoted, which lead to false conclusions often contradictory to what is said in original material.

3. Ignored information. For example there have been little to none reports about riots in European states and many attempts to make it look peaceful (in a year period). I am European and I can tell that situation in Europe is unsafe. Just search "riots in europe 2017" and you'll see that many countries are or have been recently facing with riots from which most are related to refugees.

I did not say I don't like the news. In fact they often provide some entertainment value. The fact is that most of them try to present themselves as a source of information, which is often not the case if you check the facts. Most of the news dedicate significant amount of their time to certain subjects and ignore the rest.

If I only rely on the news, I will end up not knowing certain things are even happening and a part of my information received from them will be false therefore influencing me to have a wrong opinions about certain subjects. I think if news are sloppy, bad and biased and most of their mistakes are either done intentionally or because of incompetence, I think they deserve to be called fake news.

3. Ignored information. For example there have been little to none reports about riots in European states and many attempts to make it look peaceful (in a year period). I am European and I can tell that situation in Europe is unsafe. Just search "riots in europe 2017" and you'll see that many countries are or have been recently facing with riots from which most are related to refugees.

Your third statement goes against the rules of your second statement.

You would need to compare the number of riots over a number of years spanning several centuries taking into account population growth in order to demonstrate that their ha's been an increase in riots in Europe.

Also, you may be a citizen of a European country, but it is one that is well known for holding prejudiced views due to it's unfortunate history, so I don't blame you, but you would do well to reflect on how much your views are based on repetition of received information and how much is a genuine opinion realised from real experience.

I think you'll find that the number of riots in Europe has been in decline for a long time, not to mention wars between European states.

You might be basing your opinion on what you have been told, but if you take a broader view you will find we are in a much better position than we probably ever have been.

Most riots which are linked to refugees in Europe are racists marching against refugees.

Please don't claim to speak on behalf of Europe at any time in the future. It makes us look foolish.

@Phakh Gokhn, I would like to expand a bit on your ignored information with an analogy from the US.

Lately, if you haven't heard, emails were leaked from the Democratic Party and one of Hillary Clinton's aides. One person that a lot of bad information that was released about was Donna Brazille, the person that was appointed head of the Democratic party after the first DNC leak caused the previous head to resign in the middle of the convention.

Among other things, the most notorious thing Donna Brazille did was to leak questions for a debate to Hillary Clinton, using her position within CNN to get access, and using her position within the Democratic Party to help HRC cheat.

Now, Donna Brazille is all over the news, claiming that the leaked emails were manipulated by foreign state actors, and that she was a target of a mis-information campaign. And the news is covering this hack and giving her a voice. However, the FBI has confirmed that none of the leaked emails were altered. Yet everytime she is given a platform by the news, noone corrects her that she committed a serious ethical breach, the emails prove it, they were not altered in anyway, and the FBI is 100% contradicting her.

On the other-hand, Donald Trump accuses Hillary Clinton for taking money from the Russians in order to facilitate a sale of the largest stockpile of Uranium to Vladimir Putin. The same news sources hosting Donna Brazille and letting her make unsubstantiated claims despite clear and convincing evidence, rate Donald Trump a Pants-on-Fire Liar because of his claim.

The news media picks apart his accusation, every single line of it, and fault Trump for not being 100% right with his accusation of Clinton.

So here's what actually happened during the negotiations to sell Uranium to Russia:

-Clinton was head of one of 11 departments that signed off on the deal, she wasn't the only one responsible for signing off the whole deal (Yet, if she wouldn't have signed off on it, Russia wouldn't have gotten the stockpile of Uranium, they're the bad guys, right? Or did HRC and BHO not realize they were bad at the time?)

-Bill Clinton was paid $500,000 from a Russian bank with direct ties to the Kremlin (Yes, Hillary didn't take the money, Bill did. Oh, and what did he get paid half a million to say? we don't know.)

-The Clinton Foundation received millions of dollars from Russian sources, funneled through a Canadian charity. (Through Canada to hide the transaction? Plus Hillary failed to disclose these donations despite her explicit promise to disclose all foreign contributions to her 'charity' while she was secretary of state.)

In conclusion: Is it fake news when news agencies let people aligned with their position to exploit professional relationships (leaking debate questions), they give platforms to have the same exploiter spout false narratives unchecked (the emails were never altered), they excoriate the person making a founded, but not leak-tight, accusation, and meanwhile fail to do any real investigative journalism on the founded accusation?

Probably not Fake News, but definitely BS News.

The problem today is that people only think something is important when the news media tells them to think its important. There are too many people that can't critically discern whats actually happening when they have the facts delivered to them. They have to be told what to think, and then they get all worked up based on what someone else told them to think, and start proxy wars over what is and isn't fake news, when at the end of the day, does it make much of a difference if its fake or BS news?

Show me a piece of news and I'll show you how it's "fake news" according to this absurd standard.

Read the Fox News piece, he was talking to people like you. People are trying to re-define what fake news means. It has an established meaning. It doesn't mean 'imperfect journalism' it means stories that are 100% blatant lies.

1. Information portrayed as news without any actual evidence, or evidence is misleading and inaccurate to other sources. Opinion pieces are excluded from this, because they're opinion pieces. An article promoting the well-refuted "1 in 4 girls get raped in college" statistic is an example.2. News articles that are clearly biased for a single side to a point of not showing any counterarguments. Major news channels ignoring those who said Trump could win are a perfect example. 3. Publishing an article/report that is done to cause negative effects to a person or group. (Hello, Huffington Post. Whipping your readers into thinking Trump is Beelzebub in the flesh is 100% reliable, trustworthy news, right?)4. Media that follows a specific agenda. My morning news should not have a bias. It should tell me the facts.

that is not fake news not because it's even remotely accurate. it's fake news because it's not news at all. it's an opinion. different people have different scales of dumbness and how it is measured. a dumb thing for one person could be not dumb for someone else. There is also the question of motive. it might seem like someone is doing something dumb but to that person it makes complete sense because they have more information. you don't know what's happening just because you see something or hear something. but any person that uses his brain would most likely put you on the dumb side of their dumbness spectrum.

the term "fake news" wouldn't be thrown around so frequently if Hillary became president. not because there would be less fake news. it would be the same amount. except for now a lot of news would be censored and reporters killed in freak suicide incidents or "accidents" if they said something bad about Clinton no matter how true or false it is, but reporters know they can say anything about Trump and stay alive. so they use that to defame him without having any real proof, because they don't tend to have any. and in response to the defamation, the term "fake news" is used, because that's what it is. calling fake news "fake news" isn't as effective as killing the people that slander you, but Trump hasn't figured that out yet or just he hasn't reached Hillary's level of petty.

Yes, they did. Google did too. And they censored the real fake news, not these Alternative Facts definitions people in this thread are using. According to these definitions, everything can be called fake news.

I take Brietbart with caution. Sure, there are things they do report on that happened, but they're guilty as well. Digging themselves into a grave with Hillary's "satanic child rape rings" is just as bad as when CNN said "oh yeah, Trump's gonna lose Florida, Georgia, Texas, Ohio, North Carolina, Tennesee... we might as well just declare Hillary the winner".